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This is a term that must baffle those who know only touch tone, area code, star and pound.

Back in the day in Baltimore the names which still reside in my memory are Calvert, Eastern, Broadway, Saratoga, Belmont and Orleans.

Those were telephone exchanges -- actual neighborhood buildings where operators toiled to hand-connect wires on a switchboard.

You knew if a girl gave you an Orleans number she lived around Belair Road or if it was Broadway than maybe she was a Fells Point girl (present Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski had that one) and Eastern ordinarily made her a Highlandtown girl.

The present day strings of number have no romance or adventure but a number preceded by Plaza, Chesapeake or Belmont could only lead to fantastic fantasy.

Like my SSN and USN service number my first phone number Orleans 5-1418 remains firmly in my databank.

The last company I drove for back in the '90s before disability claimed me offered us as drivers when our trucks needed replacing the choice of either power steering or air conditioning. I drove the night shift from 6PM to 6AM in a tanker carrying 80000 pounds when full and weighing about 27000 empty. The day driver with whom I shared the tractor wanted power steering so that is what we ended up with.

The units without power steering had a steering wheel over 2.5 feet in diameter. The new fangled power steering made keeping the shiny side up very easy and you didn't have to be Charles Atlas to drive it. Six months after we got our new tractor, the company changed the replacement program to all new units had power steering and air conditioning. Because of my day driver's seniority (he had been driving for them since 1971 when he came home from the Army.

We thought we had died and gone to heaven!

As for that kind of tractor in the picture, cab overs are very hard on you ride wise but steer quickly. I drove a cab over with a sleeper when I drove over the road before the gas tanker job. You have to pay very close attention because they tend to oversteer and can go into the ditch very easily if you get distracted.

Driving big trucks - the best job I ever had till I couldn't do it anymore. Too old and wore out now but it was great while it lasted.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.